Bringing Up Sebastian
by LaLa Loopsie 11
Summary: Snapshots of Sebastian Hunter's life in the pre-Education of Sebastian era, beginning when he is 8 years old. **I do not own these characters. They belong solely to Jane Harvey-Berrick who penned The Education of Sebastian and The Education of Caroline. I merely fell in love with the main characters and my fingers started typing.**


"Sebastian!"

His mother's voice was so shrill and sudden that Sebastian's pencil shot across the paper like a rocket, making a lengthy tear in his homework. Worry lines creased his forehead as he checked the table underneath for damage, but thankfully, there didn't seem to be any marks.

"Goddammit, get in here right now!"

With a deep sigh, he wondered if the paper could be taped back together, and he pushed back from the table to go to his mother. Sebastian ran into the formal living room just as she was getting revved up again, arms crossed, one foot tapping imperiously.

"Oh, there you are, Your Grace! So delighted you could spare the time." Estelle Hunter was a force to be reckoned with, with perfectly coiffed hair and carefully chosen clothes that belied her inner chaos.

"Sebastian, can you tell me what this is? Hmmm?" Estelle cocked an eyebrow at her young son, and pointed to an errant LEGO on the carpet. A trick question – never a good sign.

"Um, it's a LEGO," Sebastian ventured tentatively.

Estelle took a deep breath, then suddenly leaned in to her small son, towering over him. "I know what the fuck it is. What I want to know is why it is still on the fucking floor in here when I expressly told you to clean up every single god damn piece and put them in your room."

"I'm sorry. You asked what it was." Estelle slapped Sebastian so quickly he didn't even see it coming. That was unusual for him, because in his house it was necessary for survival always to know the whereabouts of his parents' hands. Ignoring the stinging ache in his cheek, Sebastian darted below his mother's arm, which was still extended, and grabbed the offending blue piece before making a mad dash for the relative safety of his bedroom.

Estelle's shenanigans this afternoon were par for the course. In fact, if one opened a scrapbook representing Sebastian's home life to date, it would be a pitiful thing to behold. There would be no pictures of Mom serving up milk and cookies after school, no pictures of Father and son playing catch in the backyard. One would be more apt to see photos of little Sebastian trying to awaken his mother from a drink-induced nap or attempting to navigate the minefield of interacting with his father while escaping with as few bruises – both physical and emotional – as possible.

Sebastian distracted himself for a little while in his room with a few of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures before realizing he had to go. Like most eight year old boys, he often didn't recognize his body's most basic needs until it was nearly a crisis, and he _really_ had to go.

_Why didn't I run to the bathroom instead of my room? At least the bathroom door locks. _

Estelle didn't usually pursue him after venting her frustration, but out of an overabundance of caution, Sebastian pressed his ear to the door listening for any signs that she might be upstairs. Hearing none, he opened the door, took a look down the long hallway toward the top of the stairs, and sprinted to the bathroom.

After taking care of business, Sebastian caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He reached up to touch the mean red splotch on his cheek that still highlighted where he'd been slapped, and touching it stung him slightly. The outline of his mother's fingers weren't quite delineated, but he imagined they were. He let his fingers play over his cheek.

Spot checks in the mirror were nothing new. In fact, this inspection was a piece of cake compared to the usual because the offending mark was right there on his cheek. He could even see this one with his feet firmly planted on the floor. Over time, though more recently now that he thought of it, Sebastian had crawled onto the counter, performing various acts of contortion to inspect his bruises and cuts. Even at eight – and a half, thank you very much! – he was aware that his parents made sure not to mark up his face…well, hardly ever.

Sebastian couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and confused. He tried hard, so hard, to make his parents happy but he always ruined everything. He kept answering their questions all wrong, messing up his homework, and leaving messes like with his LEGO in the formal living room. He made his parents so mad, and still he didn't seem able to learn from his mistakes. They kept asking when he would learn, and Sebastian was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

What to do? Go back to the safety of his room and leave his homework undone? That was certainly a viable option if he wanted to have his hide tanned when his father got home. Or should he brave going back downstairs to finish his homework and risk setting off his mother again?

_What am I gonna do? Mrs. Barnett always says I do a good job on my homework. I have to finish it!_

Eventually, the need to complete his homework and please his teacher overrode his fear of seeing his mother again, so Sebastian quietly opened the bathroom door, crept down the hall, and descended the stairs. He could hear his mother banging around in the kitchen, and he felt like his stomach was all the way up in his throat. This was going to go one of two ways. His mother either would ignore him completely when he got back downstairs or she would light into him again. Even though he was confused by his own thoughts, Sebastian really couldn't decide which was worse. He took a deep breath and traversed the last few steps into the kitchen.

All signs pointed toward his mother ignoring him this time. Estelle was opening prepackaged lasagna and transferring it to a glass baking dish rather than cooking it in the baking container it came in. It took some effort on her part, but she did have the reputation of Family Chef to uphold, after all!

This was one point of semi-camaraderie between Sebastian and his mother. Estelle was well aware that her young son knew her dirty little secret. Sebastian's father, Donald, was under the mistaken impression that his dear wife spent a better part of the afternoon whipping up delectable fare for the Hunter family. Well, it was easy to see how he came to that conclusion because by the time Estelle was done 'cooking', there was a true mess in the kitchen.

Estelle did not turn around or stop what she was doing when Sebastian came in and started to look around for some tape. He looked in the usual place but didn't find it, and he thought twice before asking…but he needed to fix his homework sheet.

"Mama, do you know where the tape is?" He waited, but receiving no answer, he explained his situation.

"I…um, I ripped my homework on accident." _When you screamed at me._ "I just need a little bit of tape, and it'll be good as new."

Sebastian always attempted to have a cheerful attitude, and it never failed to win over most people. In fact, it seemed to win over every single person but the very two he would most like to win over. One of them was standing in the same room steadfastly ignoring him, and the other was probably going to be headed home soon. When his mother still didn't help him get some tape, he quietly started rooting through some drawers, which certainly got his mother's attention.

"Stop digging around and making a mess. Do you not realize how hard I work to keep those drawers organized? Here." She yanked open a different drawer. "Here's the tape, for God's sake."

Estelle slammed the tape down onto the counter in front of Sebastian, causing him to jump. She shook her head in frustration, apparently irritated with the sheer level of idiocy she was forced to endure on a daily basis. Listening to her tone of voice, one would think she was a rude department store clerk addressing a careless customer who was making a mess of the clothing section, rather than a mother talking to her young, impressionable child in the midst of his formative years.

Sebastian peered back into the drawer and noticed that he had indeed disrupted the neat stack of notepads, having mixed them a bit with the post-it notes. Of course he had messed it up, but he would make it right. "I'm sorry, Mama. Don't worry, I'll fix it."

"No, Sebastian, just leave it. Jesus H. Christ!" She practically spat the words before she turned back to her dinner preparations. Tears pricked at Sebastian's eyes, and he tried to blink them back before picking up the tape and turning to his homework sheet on the table.

Sebastian ended up using enough tape to securely close a moving box, but he managed to work around the math problems he would have to work and he was proud of the results. When he looked up to show his handiwork to his mother, he found she had already put the food in the oven and had absconded to the other room to 'have a little rest' as she liked to say. His eyes searched the counter and found one of the big bottles his mother liked to make "Mommy drinks" from, and he knew how they sometimes made her feel tired or sick and need to have a little rest. Now that he thought about it, he remembered seeing it out when he first got home from school, which was a little earlier than usual.

While the lasagna heated in the oven, Sebastian finished working through the remainder of the fifty math problems that had been assigned, and by that time the clock said 5:23 pm. Lieutenant Commander Donald Hunter would be rolling up soon.

_Oh, great! Mama doesn't even have the other food ready. _

Standing near the sofa, but at a safe distance, Sebastian whispered, "Mama? Mama, wake up."

When she did not stir, he spoke more loudly and moved closer; however, nothing was going to wake Estelle now, not even when Sebastian poked her several times on the shoulder. The clock now registered 5:26. He shuffled back into the kitchen, and started digging through the freezer. Bingo! He found a bag of frozen broccoli florets. He read and followed the directions on the package to the letter, and he felt like a regular chef cooking by himself on the electric stovetop. This was fun!

5:35 pm. The timer for the lasagna went off, which presented a real dilemma for Sebastian, because he was expressly forbidden to touch the oven. Estelle still would not wake up, but if he obeyed the rule to the letter, dinner would burn. Surely his mother didn't want that? He found two oven mitts and carefully removed the heavy glass pan containing the meal so lovingly prepared by his mother for the family and placed it on the stove next to the broccoli. He heard his mother stir on the sofa, and he twisted around to look at her, absolutely terrified that this was it – he was really going to get it for opening the oven. Thankfully, she had just turned over in her sleep.

5:41 pm. _Dad still isn't home? Maybe he's working late._

After sitting at the table for a few minutes, Sebastian got up to set the table for three. Three plates, three forks, three knives, and three napkins. He poured a glass of milk for himself and took a sip, then left it in the fridge to stay cool. Sebastian could smell the lasagna and broccoli, which made his stomach growl. His mother turned once more, giving him hope that she might wake and give him permission to eat. Each time a car approached on the road, his stomach lurched in anticipation only to drop in disappointment when the car drove on by.

Finally, after another half an hour had passed excruciatingly slowly, Sebastian could stand it no longer. He tried again to wake his mother, to no avail, before serving himself some cold lasagna and broccoli. He got his milk from the refrigerator and ate his meal in silence.

Naturally, as he was finishing his dinner, he heard the familiar sound of his father's car in the drive and his stomach began to clench up. Sebastian feared he would lose his dinner if his stomach clenched any tighter. He shoved the last bite of food in his mouth just as Donald walked into the kitchen.

"Well, it's nice to come home to family dinner, isn't it, son?" His father stared menacingly at him. He couldn't think of what to say, so he said nothing. With his mother, Sebastian always felt like she would rather he didn't talk, but with his father it almost felt like a challenge: say something, but make sure it's the _right _thing…or else.

Donald set about getting a plate of food ready and he heated it in the microwave, completely ignoring the fact that his wife was sleeping one off in the next room while their son had eaten a cold dinner alone. Sebastian watched his father's methodical moves.

"Did you finish your homework, Sebastian?" Well, if there was one thing Donald did care about, it was his son's schooling. Sebastian brightened, and delivered the homework sheet to his father. Donald was a whiz at math, so it would pose no problem for him to eat dinner and check all fifty of the 3-digit addition problems in his head at the same time.

"What in God's name happened to this paper?" He could hardly miss the lump of tape across the middle of the page. "I hope you'll be properly embarrassed to turn this trash in at school tomorrow. Jesus fucking Christ. Show a little respect for your teacher."

"Yes, sir." Sebastian wasn't sure whether he should say anything else, so he left it at that.

"Fine then. Let's see if you got them all right." He went over the sheet and true to his nature, rather than saying one thing about the forty-nine problems Sebastian had solved correctly, he honed in on the single one he had completed in error.

"Sebastian, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Donald rubbed his forehead briskly with his thumb and fingertips. "Are you learning a single god damned thing at school or should we have them send you back to the second grade?"

Sebastian looked down into his lap and chewed on the inside corner of his lip, while his eyes burned with tears. Sebastian was no stranger to such insults. Rather than being nurtured by his parents and encouraged, he was taunted, degraded, and even bullied; he was accustomed to it, but it still hurt.

Sebastian looked up at his father, trying to size up the best way to placate him, which was always a dangerous guessing game. Perhaps it would just be best to run? Before he could decide, it was too late. Donald had crumpled the sheet, shoved back from the table, and had thrown the homework ball – swish – right into the trash can. Without a backward glance, he walked right back out the door he had come in only ten minutes before.

Sebastian dashed tears from both eyes with the backs of his hands, before retrieving his math sheet from the trash can. He did his best to smooth the paper out on the kitchen table, but his father had done a real number on it. He slumped down in his chair, looked around the kitchen, and sighed. He had never specifically been asked to clean up after dinner, but since no one else was doing it…


End file.
